Chapter I: The Role of Interdisciplinarity
On November 9th, 1989, people from the East and West Blocks of Berlin, Germany were able to freely move along the border that separated them for over forty years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, this marked the end of the Iron Curtain and a blow to the reign of communism from the Soviet Union, which had plagued the east for a large portion of the post-war world. Symbolically, the fall represented freedom and prosperity in an ever-changing world. An ever-changing world saw the global rise of commerce, trade policy and foreign policy with new autonomous nations. This led to a massive restructuring of economies in the era from 1989 to 2000, especially in trading with the Dow Jones Industrial rising from 5635.80 points in December of 1989 to 16728.07 in January 20001. Even though the economic rise produced benefits, largely for Americans and other western countries, the fall of the Berlin wall brought civil unrest to nations fighting for their sovereign identity. Areas of former Eastern Bloc countries were gripped in war such as Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Romaniaa.
What does this represent and what can we learn from this information? There are many different interpretations that this information represents and many ways it can be interpreted, but where does the inherent truth show itself? For understanding the effect of trade policy on newly found nations, the socio-cultural and socio-economic factors within nations; perhaps one might look at this information through the prism of the birth of technological innovation and global connectedness. In addition, another can look at this as the start (or continuance) of the eternal theological struggle between belief systems of the world. Regardless of how one might see this example, they are seeing it through a phenomenon of interdisciplinarity.
Just for one moment, align the content from the first paragraph as if you were teaching this topic in a classroom. I use this example given my profession and expertise in the realm of epistemology and teaching. Naturally, the topic of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism would be best suited inside of a political science lecture hall, or possibly even more in-depth, a class on foreign policy. However, when we synthesize the growth of economies and commerce due to the opening of different nations after communism, we start to shift from a political science realm to an economics and commerce realm. With the opening of borders and new economies we see tension in different areas of the world due to the loss of traditions, this pushes the political-economic realm into the realm of ethics, sociology, and theology. Therefore, the fall of the Berlin Wall itself is only one topic; but can be used as an example of pushing a topic beyond its disciplinary realm into other disciplines. Thus, creating interdisciplinarity leading towards a physical, societal, and economic reformation.
To provide an operational definition of interdisciplinarity for the sake of this book, I would like to use a triumvirate of authors, who through their work create a succinct and general understanding of interdisciplinarity. The authors Joseph J. Kockelmans, Julie T. Klein and Lisa R. Lattuca are the three who I believe provide the deepest understanding to the phenomenon of interdisciplinarity. Kockelmans suggests that education itself is naturally interdisciplinary through enhancing knowledge and engaging in rigorous science towards the acquisition of knowledge2. Klein offers the concept that interdisciplinarity is the borrowing of knowledge from different realms to solve problems and achieve a unified knowledge3. Lattuca uses a more cognitive approach to the definition – as interdisciplinarity can open doors to new epistemological domains for a deeper inquiry on the relationship between knowledge, humanity, and society4. For myself, I will take a natural approach to interdisciplinarity in the form of cognition and epistemology, combining the different concepts into one operational definition, it would look a little something like this:
Interdisciplinarity is the inherent ability to use knowledge from many different realms and augment that knowledge to open new inquiry and new ways of understanding for successive progression throughout learning, life, and society.
Use this definition as a beacon or a guiding ethos as you advance through to conceptualize the ideas presented.
The Roles
The role of interdisciplinarity is commonly found behind the walls of an institute of higher learning, focused in the conceptual realm of humanities, and empirical entities of natural sciences. However, I would like to expand outside of the university towards understanding the role of interdisciplinarity in three areas: learning, life, and society. First, let us observe how interdisciplinarity is present in learning and how learning is contextualized within interdisciplinarity reformation or change.
In the province of Ontario, the secondary school (high school, grades 9-12) curriculum provides documentation on 18 different course types, one of which being interdisciplinary studies5. Within the interdisciplinary document, the curriculum calls for teachers to use a variety of different strategies to provide learners the ability to investigate ideas from a diverse set of perspectives6. This is a good description of the study, however, lacks the conceptualization considering the growth of an interdisciplinary framework has expanded since the ministry document dates to 2002. Within higher education, Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario recently signed the new Strategic Mandate Agreement 3 for Ontario Colleges and Universities (SMA-3) outlining the agreement between the Ontario government with Ryerson University, (with continual rollout in 2020) and succession to every college and university in Ontario7. The document has no mention of interdisciplinary studies nor the connection of different knowledge streams in relation to problem solving, aside from the standard placeholder for including experiential learning as a measure for learning skills and job outcomes8. Even though the preliminary goals for the SMA-3 date as far back to 2018, we have not addressed the role of interdisciplinary studies or interdisciplinarity as we were to bridge learning gaps through skills education and workplace training9.
On one hand, this reflects within the framework of Ontario education the role of interdisciplinary learning seems to have a baseline measure within secondary schools with no gateway to achieve or pursue true interdisciplinary learning in post-secondary institutions. In addition, some governmental bodies and institutional mandates have been more welcoming of interdisciplinary learning and an interdisciplinarity framework. Examples can be found within the Danish education system and the University of Aalborg – who constructed problem-oriented and project-based models which provided an interdisciplinary education program; where students benefited from autonomy and cross-fertilization of knowledge from different courses10. In Japan, five universities (Hokkaido University, Ibaraki University, Kyoto University, Osaka University, and the University of Tokyo) created joint research programs to foster co-knowledge and knowledge integration11. What these examples show is that the embrace of interdisciplinary learning is founded and effective in some universities, however, it is dependent on the integration of interdisciplinary learning through government policy and administrative desire.
Interdisciplinarity in life is common given the fact that humans learn daily. I reflect on the Hasbro board game: The Game of Life, where players move along throughout the game and take part in ‘activities’ such as become a photographer, learn CPR, the opportunity cost of pursuing a career or college, and create different outcomes leading to retirement. In a humorous way, The Game of Life (boardgame) is in fact interdisciplinary. Boardgames aside, how do we play the real game of life? It starts with Jean Piaget who wanted to understand the role of child cognition and how they learn and adapt in our environment, along with the reflexive nature that children use to adapt to our environment12. What Piaget uses is a constructivist framework – how as children we build our knowledge around us and shape our own worldview through different outputs of knowledge such as parents, siblings, friends, and society. For now, this is an effective understanding, but as we move forward, we may find that the role of interdisciplinarity goes beyond our construction of the environment.
The role we play in life is an interdisciplinary role, in which we are learning about new items we interact within our world and in turn learning more about ourselves. A belief would be that within the role of life consists many smaller roles we play such as childhood, adolescence, young adult, professional, husband, wife, father, mother, etc. are the interdisciplinary roles we play throughout our life; furthermore, the roles we play within our societies we are born into or introduced throughout our life.
Recent studies have been dedicated to understanding the role of interdisciplinarity and its societal impacts. Researchers Kimberly Elias and Catherine Drea make the case for students coming out of university to have a fiduciary responsibility to be knowledgeable in their discipline or multiple disciplines and use that knowledge to benefit society13. Also, Jim Ryan suggests that leadership institutions like schools should effectively relate to the society they are a part of14. The complexity of problems in a modern society calls for a need of interdisciplinarity to be connected to the role of society on a moral and ethical level. This is done by making knowledgeable connections and is proliferated to a wide variety of topics. This is not a self-serving statement to interdisciplinarians, suggesting that someone who is interdisciplinary is the only person fit to solve this; however, it relates to someone who can provide expertise in certain areas, suggestion in other areas, and deferment to other interdisciplinary or disciplinary experts in areas the individual is not an expert in. One example of this would be a political leader of a country voted leader by the people at an election, should defer expertise to medical professionals in the case of a virus pandemic.
To understand the role of interdisciplinarity with society, the concepts of work, teamwork, and collaboration come to the surface. The concept of co-learning and collaborative teamwork are important to the concept of experiential learning which is the learning based in real-world and pragmatic experiences15. Experiencing teamwork and collaboration allows for diverse ideas to come to the table, relating to society, working together with other leaders and experts can bring new ideas for society to benefit. What this leads to is the ethical notion of societal transparency from leaders in their standing to the public, and through transparency of different knowledge streams. The public can use their own knowledge base to synthesize information and autonomy to guide their lives toward what is best.
Learning, Life and Society Intertwined
Interdisciplinarity is all around us from the role of learning in the pursuit of different streams of knowledge through problem-based inquiry, with knowledge integration for students at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary level. In life, with the ability to make connections through our experiences, we train our cognitive ability through solving problems connected to situations we face on a daily basis or in society where we rely on fellow members who share it with us in a collaborative way. As a group to entrust individuals and their understanding but combine different disciplinary knowledge streams for ethical transparency for the general public.
Issues that arise come from staunch political and bureaucratic levers that introduce a lack of interdisciplinarity in learning due to administrative policy at schools or a strict rule and disciplinary ideal to run a society or life. The issue is that a modern society is so connected through technology and information that following a strict disciplinary mindset is troubling and is a topic we will dive deeper later within this text in future chapters. Furthermore, in a world where leaders are increasingly being held accountable, the expectation that one person possesses 100% knowledge in every field is unrealistic; however, the understanding that one person has the resources to have expert knowledge in one field, while pursuing continuing knowledge in other fields is tenable and the enhancement of our inherent interdisciplinarity is paramount.
To summarize this chapter is to act as a precursor to the rest of the book as we expand our minds to find evidence of interdisciplinarity through our past, our present, and towards our future. The question that is guiding this book is where does interdisciplinarity come from and is it inherent? If so, where do these notions come from and how do we know to make knowledgeable connections? We will look at writings, ideas from the past, interpretive analysis, and lean on literary experts to create and augment our own conceptualization and knowledge. We will use our experience in a modern world and connect it to recent interdisciplinary research being undertaken in the fields of education, medicine, politics, socio-cultural studies, social sciences, and structural science. Also, we can conceptualize what the future will look like for interdisciplinarity by reviewing ideas for public policy – and researchers outlining directions for different fields, moving us steadfast through the twenty-first century. At this moment, I am thinking of the scene from David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and the famous scene-cut where the character T.E. Lawrence discusses with Mr. Dryden of his adventure, before blowing out a match which quickly cuts to the stunning sunrise over a desert vista. Much like that famous cut in movie history, we too shall start our journey to understanding interdisciplinarity in the past, present, and future.